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The PCO is putting on an exhibition in collaboration with Idea Store at Canary Wharf to tie in with Women’s History Month. ‘Women In History’ is an exhibition of cartoons and caricatures based loosely around the theme and also looking more widely at issues affecting women.

Our patron Sandi Toksvig writes:

“Cave paintings were really the first cartoons. The latest analysis of them suggest they were done by women. Perfect! Let’s celebrate Women’s History month with cartoons done by female artists following in the footsteps of the very first art.”

The show has been curated by PCO committee members The Surreal McCoy and Sarah Boyce (office admin by Glenda Marshall).

Sarah writes:

“We are delighted that Idea Store has given us this space to showcase the work of women cartoonists. It’s been a tough job narrowing down the long list to those that will be on display. We wanted to get a broad range of voices and styles in the exhibition and make sure as many women cartoonists as possible got a chance to participate. Hopefully visitors will enjoy the talent, diversity and humour on display.”

Women’s History Month started in schools in California in 1978 to enhance understanding of all women’s contributions to history and society. It centres around International Women’s Day, originally celebrated in 1911 and now a fixture on 8th March. Women’s History Month is now an annual declared month in the UK, USA, Australia and Canada.

Pete visits a new exhibition of Gillray’s work at the Nottingham Contemporary gallery and talks about how the 18th-century cartoonist’s work strikes a chord with modern audiences with its parallels to today’s events.

Private Eye celebrates its 50th birthday next month and appears to be in rude health, bucking the downward trend for magazine circulation in the digital age.

The anniversary is October 25 but the celebrations start on Tuesday (September 20) with the release of a new book Private Eye: The First 50 Years, a history of the magazine written by the Eye journalist Adam Macqueen that charts its rise from 300 copies of the first edition in 1961, below, to a fortnightly circulation of more than 200,000.

The book features interviews with key players in the Private Eye story, rare archive material and unseen photos. (There are some “seen” ones too.) And, of course, there is an abundance of the cartoons that are so central to appeal of the magazine.

You can see more of those, including many by members of the PCO, which runs The Bloghorn, when the famously anti-establishment magazine puts on a First 50 Years exhibition at the very establishment Victoria and Albert Museum [Shurely shome mishtake? – Ed]. It opens at the V&A on October 18 and runs until January 8.

Cartoons will be shown in themed sections, on politics, royalty and social observation, and there will be gags, long-running strips and caricatures. The Bloghorn will have more on the exhibition nearer the time.

Ian Hislop, Editor of the magazine, has said of the 50th anniversary: “I do not want anyone to think that this is all just a huge celebration of ourselves. Our 50th year is a chance to look back and take a dispassionate view of how marvellous we are.”

If you have been following this storyyou will be unsurprised that Bloghorn thinks comics, and cartooning in all its forms, are all too readily undervalued in the UK.

It is more acceptable in the cultures of Japan, the US and across Europe to consider the narrative techniques and visual artistry employed by commercial artists as a powerful form for business and personal communication as well as entertainment and teaching.

The best single piece of evidence we offer is the attitude of the UK arts funding body – The Arts Council – towards the national Cartoon Museum* which despite its popularity, and the long history of the form in the UK , receives no central funding. We wrote about this here.

Of course, there are some exceptions in this country – political cartooning, for example, tends to receive grudging respect for its obviously satirical and “real-world” relevance. But all too often, the “cartoon” and “comic” are used here as catch-all terms for anything that is unsophisticated, childish or tacky.

Tom Harris MP on Dundee Cartoon and Comic Course @ procartoonists.org

Tom Harris speaking about the establishment of a one-year Postgraduate degre in study of Visual Communication at the University of Dundee. – The home of publishers DC Thomson

Another political figure, the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, did exactly that last week. Criticising the Daily Mail, he described the paper as a “sexist, racist, bigoted comic cartoon strip”(Bloghorn is only interested in the second half of that assertion, which we feel is a little unfair).

Academic appreciation of cartooning is, in fact, not new: since 1973, the University of Kent has hosted the British Cartoon Archive, a collection of more than 150,000 pieces intended to encourage the study and appreciation of cartoon art, including comic strips. The Cartoon Archive is freely open to those wishing to carry out research, and is actively involved in promoting the art form – often in collaboration with the national Cartoon Museum, the PCO and its fellow cartoonists organisations, the BCA and the CCGB.

Some of you might remember me banging on like a girly bubble-brain about how delighted I was to be contributing cartoons to the QI spin-off books a couple of years ago. Things have moved on a little, and I have now contributed some illustrations to the TV show itself. I attended a recording with a friend on Friday, and probably lost any semblance of coolness when mingling with Messrs Fry, Davies, Clarkson, and Mitchell in the green room. It’s always fantastic to find new markets for your work, and cartooning has taken me to some interesting places. And it’s always nice to deal with people who are friendly, appreciative, and creative, which the QI crowd certainly are. It was their 100th show on Friday. Happy birthday, QI. Here’s to the next 100.

QI is set to return to our screens with a new series later this year whilst episodes from previous series are being shown on BBC2 currently. The QI Annual 2010, with artwork by Adrian Teal is out now.

David Levine, since 1963 caricaturist for the New York review of Books, has died. You can read an obituary from the New York Timesand scroll through a short slideshow about him here. The Review of Books has an excellent archive of his work from the 1960s to the present day available here.

Bloghorner Tayo Fatunla is interviewed by the BBC World Service about his reports from the recent Pan-African Cultural festival in Algiers. The main clip starts at 16.15 in and Tayo takes some questions from about 26.00 in.

John Roberts is our Artist of the Month for July so we asked him which other cartoonist’s work he admired.

The cartoonist whose work I most admire has to be Holte (Trevor Holder) who I understand is now fully retired. (Why does a cartoonist retire….?) His line and colour work was amazing and I think quite beautiful. Every artist I’ve met (as well as cartoonists) has said that they wished that they could draw in a more ‘loose’ style – Holte always did this quite effortlessly. Of course there are many, many more cartoonists whose work I am in awe of but Holte has to be the one whose artwork I never tire of looking at. Not the funniest cartoonist that’s ever walked the Blue Planet but gosh that artwork…

PCOer Graham Fowell will be drawing caricatures of all-comers for just £5 per head on Comic Relief Night this Friday (March 13).

The caricaturist, known professionally as the Hit Man, will be doing his five-hour stretch of drawing crowds at The Trent Inn on his home patch near Nottingham. Graham told the Bloghorn: “We want to raise loads of cash for Comic Relief.”

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Disclaimer: Any opinion expressed here is that of the named individual and not that of the UK Professional Cartoonists' Organisation unless explicitly stated. Artwork attributed to a named author or publication on this diary should be noted by anyone linking to us from any other site. Thank you. If you wish to reproduce an image please contact the artist from here.